Just to add where I'm at on this. I started in AW many moons ago and came over to AH with my squad when EA killed it. Been here ever since. Have taken a few breaks here and there but even during those was always active in events. I don't think I ever missed an FSO other than a frame or two, usualy due to wife ack, in all that time until this year when my FSO squad folded. So it's gone with the people I've flown with over the years. They moved on (or passed on sadly) for whatever reasons they had. I'm currently kind of on hiatus from AH. Keeping my sub current but don't currently have the itch. The 80th guys aren't around when I'm on. Only a couple left far as I can tell. Lazer and Shuff. Miss you guys. Numbers in the events have dropped to the point it's just not working for me either. I was CIC when we ran Stalin's 4th the first time. Had a couple of hundred just on my side. Light years away from that now.There was always that but now it's gone too. Still hanging around tho.
I mess with IL-2. Nef talked me into trying it but I held off until they added a P-38--of course! It's a beautiful bird. The engine management thing isn't a big deal with that one even with two engines to deal with. Really not. But it's really how I'd hoped that AH would have evolved into looking like as time went on. I'd always hoped we'd all be flying something that looked more realistic and IL-2 has done that. That's not a deal breaker but for me it's a sign things are changing/evolving for the better. There's better technology, better PCs, better graphics engines. Why not take advantage of that as time goes on? Anyway, I like the game. I've only messed with MP a few times. Didn't like it when I started flying in VR as I kept getting whacked by people I never saw. Now with NeckSafer I can look around as I did with TIR and that's no longer an issue. The servers are small--but so are the maps so they're paired better than AH with the same numbers, a third side and huge maps. There isn't a built-in VOX system and I don't like that. But they use SRS that a lot of people (not enough) use. The people that run the Combat Box server have gone all in with what that program can do, It has bots that can talk back to you giving you things like a callsign or flight callsign. It knows where you are and can direct you with traffic around the airbase or give you a mission and grid to head to. Pretty cool. No icons is something to just get used to. No biggie. Navigation is a challenge on certain maps but you just look for waypoints on the terrain and navigate the old way. It's harder but I'm OK with that. YMMV. And YMMV is what it's all about. I like it, you may not. And there's nothing wrong with that.
I started dabbling with MSFS last year. Talk about real, this one uses real world maps and topography. You're flying over the real world. You can have live weather or inject your own. You can also inject real time air traffic. I have another program for this. Pretty cool. First thing I did was to buy Flying Iron's P-38 which is outstanding. Starting that thing is a challenge as are most warbirds. I snagged their Spit IX, F6F and 109 during a Christmas sale but don't have near the time in them yet. MSFS is a different animal. No combat. No functional weapons either. That's a good thing. There'd be nitwits shooting down 747s on approach to LAX the first day. They're out there! But I see this as more of a sightseeing thing than anything else. I just fly around places I know I'll likely never get a chance to see. I recently bought the A2A Piper Comanche which is a "study level" plane with all the bells and whistles available. They say it's the GA bird to have. So far I'm liking it. This plane will age as you use it and even have things fail if you just ignore them. I wanted to learn about navigation from point to point in the real world. It's been fun. Using Little Navmaps to make flight plans to get from place to place. Doing IFR stuff at night and in weather is a lot of fun believe it or not. Gotta concentrate on your instruments and have them set up right. That's what I've been doing more of lately. It's a challenge and I have to beat it. Setting up controls in this one is another level of hard! The clickable cockpits go on forever. Every switch, button and knob in ever bird. This is why I'll never mess with airliners! Just too much! Even with all my nice gear I'd run out of switches buttone and knobs! I'm using a third party software, Spad.neXt to map things as there are SO many of these you'd run out of key commands so they use code strings to assign stuff. Trick is finding them. A lot of common ones but every plane is different. The Spad software is difficult but the light bulbs are starting to go off in my head. I got past the VKB and Virpil stuff then Joystick Gremlin--this is just more of the same. My latest hurdle is assigning the fuel tank selector knobs for the P-38 to the rotary switches on my Virpil Throttle. Some great peeps on the Flying Iron Discord are helping me out. Lot of community there.
But as I've said, YMMV. If that's not your thing, that's fine. I'm just looking at newer stuff. I'M NOT SHILLING FOR ANYONE--just to be clear for the impaired among us. Basically, because I have the rig for it. What I have is really overkill for AH.